Corruption: Low-risk and high-reward crime?

BINTANGNEWS.com
–A
big question lingers as to why Indonesia, whoever the president is, seems
unable to diminish corruption. Defined broadly as the misuse of power by a
public official for private gains, corruption has characterized every
administration ever since this country was born 71 years ago, despite differing
modus operandi and actors.

Simply put,
corruption has become entrenched in our daily lives regardless of the various
efforts to combat it. The failure to eradicate corruption indicates a
fundamental problem with the anticorruption strategy we have implemented.

The easiest way to
place blame in our inability to beat corruption may lie with the lack of
political will. It is true that every administration — Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s
is no exception — the deficit of political will has contributed to the
emergence of bad governance.

It took Jokowi, for
instance, almost one year to resolve the latest standoff between the police and
the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). As a result, there has been a
significant decline in the number of cases the KPK has managed to unveil. At
the same time, Jokowi also has missed the opportunity to tackle police
corruption as his political gesture was not in favor of the KPK and the public
in general during the conflict.

However, in order to
correctly analyze the groundwork of our anticorruption campaign we need to
elaborate in what way does political will not exist and is there any country
whose political leader does show ambition in cracking down on corruption. For
the latter, we can easily refer to neighboring Singapore, which since 1985 has
always scored high on the Transparency International’s Corruption Perception
Index (CPI). Among Asian countries, Singapore is always perceived as the least
corrupt.

However, in fact,
corruption used to threaten Singapore when under British rule as widespread
bribery involved police officers, custom officials and public servants.
Corruption was practically the way of life of the nation until the People
Action Party (PAP) came to power in 1960 and started to treat corruption as low
reward and high risk (Quah, 2001).

Singapore under the
PAP began to treat corruption eradication as a priority agenda. Of course
comparing Singapore with Indonesia is unfair because Singapore is only a
city-state. But the political will to severely punish corruption and turn this
dirty behavior into a high-risk activity is an excellent example for Indonesian
politicians.

Unlike Singapore,
Indonesia gives special treatment to graft convicts. For example, Law and Human
Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly quite recently proposed a revision to the
government regulation on the rights of criminals, including graft convicts.
Based on the minister’s draft, graft convicts have the right to remission and
conditional release as long as they show good behavior. He says reducing prison
terms of convicts, including corruptors, will help solve overcapacity facing
our prisons.

The draft, however,
will eliminate the existing condition for remission that currently is given
only to corruption convicts who help law enforcers as justice collaborators.
The role of justice collaborators is crucial as they can lead investigators to
the masterminds of corruption.

The idea to ease
procedures of remission for corrupt public officials without specific conditions
has undermined public expectation for a better anticorruption strategy. It also
exacerbates the ugly fact that judges tend to hand down light, rather than
maximum, sentences to corruption convicts.

A study by Indonesia
Corruption Watch (ICW) earlier this year found that imprisonment for graft
convicts averaged only 2.2 years. With corruption convicts entitled to
remission on several national holidays such as Christmas, Idul Fitri,
Independence Day, National Heroes Day, etc. simply because of “good behavior”,
they are able to regain freedom even faster.

If President Jokowi
approves such a draft it can be said that he simply has no spirit for defeating
corruption. Worse still, it will prove right public suspicion of the
President’s incapability of withstanding short-term political interests that
often characterizes public policy and decision-making processes in this
country.

Instead of providing
special treatment to corruption convicts, the government should do what it
takes to maximize deterrence on potential fraudsters by implementing the
stolen-asset recovery policy that has eluded Indonesia. The ICW study revealed
that less than half the total state losses resulting from corruption could be
rescued by enforcing the policy. The amount does not include the budget spent
on investigations into each corruption cases, however.

The KPK is an
exception in the fight against graft as it also enforces the Antimoney
Laundering Law to trace as many assets controlled by a suspect as possible. The
KPK’s success in seizing more than Rp 250 billion (US$19.23 million) worth of
assets from graft convict Fuad Amin, a former Bangkalan regent in East Java,
shows its seriousness in tackling corruption.

It’s better for the
government to follow the lead of utilizing the best practices in eradicating
corruption, which is treating corruption as a high risk, low-reward crime, not
the other way around.***